Kathy Reichs - Bare Bones

review by show host 29th oct
This was the first one of this authors I have read and for the first half, I decided I wouldn't be reading another. I wasn’t enjoying what I considered to be a poor copy of Patricia Cornwell. Also, she spent too much time talkingabout/ describing the habits of her dog and cat. However, it did get better.
Kathy Reichs author, is/was a forensic anthropologist in the state of North Carolina. The story is set in charlotte/Carolina and guess what – the main character Dr Tempe Brennan is a forensic anthropologist!!
The story begins with Dr. Tempe Brennen packing up the bones of a newborn baby who had been cremated in a woodstove on a remote farm. The mother has been identified as the daughter of someone Dr Brennen knows, Gideon Banks. He worked at the forensics division as a cleaner for many years. although it wasn't her job to impart this news personally, she felt she should as she knew him. the daughter (mother of the dead baby) has done a runner and nobody in the family knows where she is.
The story moves on to Brennan, her daughter and the dog, going to a hoedown/barbeque party in a remote field near a remote farm. The dog starts going loopy as he sniffs out a buried bag of bones in various stages of decomposition. The bones turn out to be bear, as in grizzly bear,remains.

Brennen is due to go on holiday with her boyfriend when a call comes through about a private plane which has crashed in the mountains. They need her there to identify the charred body remains….. Holiday cancelled.

Returning to the grizzly bear remains, a human bone is found. A more thorough search of the farm near the discovery site uncovers more bones, headless in some cases, bodyless in others, this time some are human, as well as those of exotic birds.
All these events become linked together along with: animal poaching, missing police officers, threatening emails to Dr. Brennan and drug trafficking.

As I said earlier, for the first half of the book, my mind wasn't being captured but by the time I got to page 162, (half way through the book) it was starting to get my attention and I started to warm to this author, although some may give up before page 162! I do agree with other reviewers that there were too many characters/animals/plots. As I said she reminds me of Patricia Cornwell, who too worked in forensics (she took a job at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner of Virginia).